


A Glacier Moving Through You

by harryhotspur



Series: the book of love is long and boring [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Academic! Joe, Additional Warnings in Author's Notes, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Dancing, F/F, Families of Choice, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Minor Character Death, Paramedic! Nicky, Queer Families, Slice of Life, acts of service, cooking as as way to express love, descriptions of illness, discussion of medical stuff, from Nicky's POV, pneumonia mention, quick note: the minor character death is not from AIDS, the inherent romanticism of folding laundry together when gay, this is not an au and everybody is still immortal, this may sound like a very heavy story but it does have a hopefully uplifting ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harryhotspur/pseuds/harryhotspur
Summary: New York 1993. Joe is doing a MA in Medieval Studies, Nicky training as an EMT-P. This is a story about caring, loss, and a plague. About finding, losing, and finding a community again. About the radical potential of being a member of the LGBT community and being blessed withmore life
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: the book of love is long and boring [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917394
Comments: 50
Kudos: 173





	A Glacier Moving Through You

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from John Grant's beautiful song [Glacier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3BzvWPYo94) The music video is a summary of LGBT+ history from a North American context. Content warning for mentions of homophobia which comes with this. Also, I'll just casually leave [Caramel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqYc9hhPSfA) as a lovely little song for Joe and Nicky. 
> 
> Inspired by the shot of Nicky's college ID card in the end credits and my thoughts of 'hmm what if they were BOTH in college', alongside an unhealthy amount of me projecting my feelings regarding working / training in healthcare in our current pandemic. 
> 
> This is a story that set in the backdrop of the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 90s, please see my endnotes for further discussion / historical context. I am a lesbian who did not live through this time but it is one I have spent a lot of time researching over the past few years. Using information from [a tumblr post](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/628438786866561024/timeline-of-the-old-guards-involvement-in-world) which analysed Copely's wall, the start of the fic briefly has The Guard in Croatia in 1992 working with the United Nations Protection Force. Please see my endnotes for further discussion of this. When writing about historical events, especially for a movie such as The Old Guard which has fictional characters deeply rooted in these events, my first thought is how these events still affect various communities in the world today, so please do let me know if I have handled anything insensitively. 
> 
> Content warnings for violence, AIDS, descriptions of needles, drowning, and mentions of homophobia. 
> 
> Mature rating is mainly for some violence, there is also non-explicit sexual content. 
> 
> This is part 2 of my series exploring the Five Love Languages through the eyes of Joe and Nicky. This covers Acts of Service, both between the main couple but also in terms of service to a wider community and found family. You don't have to read [Bright Lights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382739)before this, but hopefully, it works as a companion piece!
> 
> Thank you so much to [Alicia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flamingbluepanda/pseuds/Flamingbluepanda) for the beta.
> 
> The absolutely wonderful Polar made a BEAUTIFUL mood board edit for this fic - [check it out and send some love!](https://alaskandawn.tumblr.com/post/632611158468247552/birthday-present-for-harryhotspur-which-is-also-a)

**New York, February 1993.**

Sometimes, even as somebody who had lived for over nine hundred years, Nicky felt he needed more time. More time in the day to get done what needed to be done. To be able to give some of the time he had been given to others.

Today was one of those days. 

He guessed that was normal when he didn’t usually have any time constraints. 

He stood on the subway platform and flicked through a set of flashcards idly. His body felt fine even after the long day, but his mind was tired and sluggish. Nicky stared at the diagram before him, trying to commit it to memory, but the colours swam and his attention waned. He closed the book of flashcards as the tannoy announced the subway was going to arrive. 

As he always did, Nicky had called Joe from the phone in the EMT staff room before he had left the Emergency Department. He knew Joe worried about him traveling across the city alone late at night. And it was nice to hear his voice after a long day. 

“Hey, Yusuf, I’m leaving soon, I’ll be back in forty-five minutes or so”,

“Okay, great, see you then,” Joe’s voice was warm on the line. Nicky imagined him with his head turned to the side; the phone trapped between his cheek and shoulder as he stretched the cord to potter around their apartment, “Was work okay - you needed to demonstrate those skills to Alexei right?”. 

“Yeah, yeah, it was fine”. 

A pause hung in the air as Nicky left the events of the day unsaid. 

“We’ll talk about it when you get home. Okay?”

Background chatter in Italian drifted into the crackling phone. Nicky couldn’t make out the words exactly but heard the voices rise to a crescendo. Joe groaned loudly and let out a sharp hiss of breath. ‘Ah, Nicolò.... Nicolò - your team is now down one nil. Lost three nil last week to AS Roma, I’m not sure what they are playing at really’. 

Nicky laughed softly, smiling at the image of Joe carefully tuning their radio to Italian channels. Before they’d flown to New York six months ago, they’d been in Genoa very briefly. Afterwards Nicky had found himself inexplicably homesick. It wasn’t like the city was the same, and it wasn’t like he felt any special attachment to it after all these years, but leaving had made something in his heart ache. In an attempt to make him feel better, Joe had bought the radio and spent hours figuring out the frequencies to receive the correct channels. Then, after a long day of classes, Nicky had come back to soft chatter in Italian; Joe chopping a mound of basil, and the smell of roasting pine nuts in the oven. Two rich orange egg yolks sat in a ramekin on the side, next to a bowl of durum wheat flour. 

‘You didn’t tell me you changed your thesis topic to an exploration of the tragic downfall of Genoa CFC?’, Nicky said, with a chuckle. 

Joe snorted and Nicky heard the hiss of the kettle boiling in the background. He must have been making a cup of tea to take to bed. 

‘Don’t think that falls under the remit of the Centre for Medieval Studies. Hmm think it’s a bit late for me to change now, Nicky.’ A pause on the line and the sound of water being poured into a cup. ‘Besides, it’s a Sunday night. let a man rest’. 

‘Alright, alright, no judgment here. I’ll have to go Joe, there will be a queue behind me in a minute’. 

‘Be safe okay,’ there was a softness in Joe’s voice that made Nicky’s heart ache. 

‘I’m an immortal warrior who has battled the forces of evil for nine hundred years, I can manage to get the subway home’. 

Joe laughed loudly. 

‘I hope none of your colleagues are around, _habibi_. They will think you give yourself some _really_ weird pep talks. See you soon’. 

Nicky smiled. 

‘See you soon’. 

As the train rattled towards Manhattan, Nicky lent his head back against the grimy window and half closed his eyes. The carriage smelled of stale beer, piss, and sweat. The tinny sound of dance music bled out of the pair of headphones connected to the portable CD player of the man sitting beside him. The man tapped his foot off beat. The mixture of sounds and smells scratched at the endings of each of his nerves, making his skin crawl. All Nicky wanted to be back in the apartment with Joe, his arms around him, and to just sleep. He looked up and around the carriage, in large pointed letters on the window opposite him somebody had carved -

F U C K T H E 9 0s. Next to the nine, a number eight had been scribbled out. 

Nicky let out a breathy exhale. He felt every word of that. Before they arrived in New York, he knew he was likely having a crisis of faith, in a religious sense, and in terms of everything they had done over the past centuries. It was easy to doubt whether what they did was right. If there is one thing living for over nine hundred years does to a person it is instilling them with a cruel sense of hindsight. Now, the slow labour of a new millennium had begun, promising the birth of a new world that seemed to only grow more morally nebulous and confusing. 

At least two years of the nineties had been sorted since the turn of the decade. They knew they were heading to New York by September of ‘92 as Joe had got funding to do a Masters degree at Columbia. From the beginning of that year, the whole group was in Croatia with The United Nations Protection Force, trying to maintain an environment conducive for peace talks. For months, Nicky had sat watch over one of the demilitarized zones, peering through the scope of his rifle. Phillipe, a soldier from Spain, was the second sniper on his shift. They smoked cigarettes, talked about their lives, complained about the weather. Both of them felt helpless, sitting with their guns, while conflict and hate gripped the region. 

Then, on a patrol, there had been an attack. Phillipe was shot. Nicky had pressed dressing after dressing to the wound, keeping a record of the packets he had used. Somebody else had taken over. Nicky had moved up to Phillipe’s chest, knelt in something slick, then felt his friend’s ribs break underneath the heel of his overlocked hands as he pushed downwards. The rip of dressing packs opening over and over again; the crinkle of the foil wrappers being added to the pile continued. Nicky fell into the familiar rhythm. Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Thirty compressions. Two breaths. His shoulders and back ached. Thirty compressions. Two breaths. 

A familiar hand touched his shoulder. 

‘Nicolò, he’s gone’, Joe’s voice was far away, as if he was talking to him through a radio. ‘You can stop now. You can stop. Nicky! Stop!’. 

Then, Joe was helping him up to his feet, taking his arm; washing his hands and forearms with a bottle of water. 

‘It’s not your fault he died, you know’, Joe had said to him later, as they lay side by side in the warehouse which had been turned into a bunk room. ‘You did everything right’. 

‘I last did any training in the fifties,’ Nicky replied and reached across the small but also impossibly wide space between their two single bunks. Joe took Nicky’s hand in his. ‘What if I missed something?”

"You didn’t,” Joe pressed a kiss to his knuckles. 

Nicky couldn’t shake the fact that he had. 

During their time in Croatia, Nicky had obtained a reference from one of the United Nations medics he worked with. The medic knew he had experience of combat medicine - just not to the extent of the years. Before Nicky left, he contacted the New York Public Hospitals and the community college they were affiliated to and signed up to top-up his training as an EMT-P. 

This chain of events had led to his late night subway rides; the books of flashcards; the textbooks piled up next to Joe’s books at the side of their bed. 

Before they came to New York, Joe had desperately needed to retreat from a world filled with violence and find solace again in art and literature. He needed to see beauty again, think critically about something other than tactics; exit and entry points and when to transition from gun to sword. Joe responded to seeing horror by recentering himself to the world through art and poetry. After a particularly bad day, Joe would sit, barefoot and cross-legged, in whatever nature they were nearby and draw the skies and scenery around them. Nicky would watch him and see how his posture relaxed to the sound of charcoal on paper. Hear his voice rise and fall over the measured rhythms and cadences of an ancient poem. For Joe, violence was only justified to protect the small pieces of radiant beauty humanity managed to mine from tragedy and pain. Joe saw that beauty everywhere he went and would protect it with his life. A little voice inside Nicky uttered _what did you ever do to deserve this wonderful, beautiful, sensitive man?_

Within himself, Nicky knew he didn’t know how to exist without facing the violence of the world head on. He had seen horrendous violence; enacted horrendous violence; enabled horrendous violence. To cope with this, he had to immerse himself within that violence, try and push and squeeze against it until he felt some goodness start to emerge again. Only by doing this, could he maintain his belief that their actions were making some positive change to the world around them. 

As a result, the aftermath of the extremes of violence the city brought: shootings, stabbings, collisions, were more rationalisable than the slow progressions of illness. Flashing lights, police cars, tape and sirens were easier to confront than worried relatives, half eaten meals on tables, and the feeling of heartbroken eyes on his back. When treating casualties of violence, somewhere in the back of his mind there was a thought that somehow he could fix it. He could get a gun; a knife; a surgical scalpel and cut out the root of that disease somewhere. If he only died enough times; made the right choices; removed the right people, then, someday the world might emerge better. 

It wasn’t that he wasn’t good at providing comfort and support. He knew he was. Nicky had taken hundreds, if not thousands of grieving parents, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters into his arms. He had been there for his family with practical solutions during hard times - a meal; a hot drink; blood stains removed carefully from a favourite shirt. (The trick was to use salt and cold water - never hot). It was just harder to face the reality of the heavy pressing inevitability of disease; the knowledge that every single body apart from his own and those of his family were slowly ticking timebombs filled with malfunctions. It was easier to look into grief filled eyes and know you could fight and rage and kill to destroy whatever had hurt them. Harder to place his hands on the arm of a stranger and say helplessly: _I see you. I see your pain. It hurts and it’s terrible and I’m so, so deeply sorry_. 

With a heavy feeling pressing upon him, he exited the subway at the stop closest to their apartment. Columbia University Campus lay still and silent, just starting to be touched with the start of the night time frost. Nicky zipped his coat up further and pulled his scarf up. Why did New York in the winter have to be so fucking cold. 

When he reached the small apartment he shared with Yusuf, he ascended the stairs and turned his key in the lock. Even though they had only been there for just over six months, the smell was familiar and homely. 

"I’m home," he called as he turned the hallway light on. The lights in the living room and kitchen were off but a small shaft of light escaped from under the door of the bedroom. 

"Hey, babe", Joe’s voice came from behind the bedroom door. Nicky kicked off his boots and placed them on the rack by the doorway. He hung his coat up and placed his keys in the small bowl on the console table. Familiar routines. 

He went through to the bedroom. It was warm and cosy. Joe had hung a few pictures on the walls and groaning bookcases lined the back wall, the shelves dotted with trinkets from their time together. The room symbolised safety. Here, he no longer slept with a small knife tucked in the side of the mattress, instead it was buried alongside tissues and lip balms in his bedside drawer. 

Joe sat up in bed, two pillows behind his head and the duvet pulled over his legs. He looked up at him over his reading glasses and a smile passed across his face. Joe placed the book he was reading down on the bedside table next to his empty mug.

"I made you a cup of tea", Joe said as he signalled to the flask on the bedside table on Nicky’s side of the bed. "I just had spaghetti for dinner, there is some left over in the fridge if you are hungry". 

Nicky pressed a kiss to the top of Joe’s head in thanks and unscrewed the lid from the flask. He took a sip, _chamomile_. 

"I am not hungry really, might just have some toast if I feel like it later on". 

Joe held his hand out to him, beckoning him to come onto the bed. He looked at Nicky with admiring eyes, scanning him up and down. He let out a small whistle between his teeth. 

"That uniform does great things for you, you know". 

Nicky laughed softly and took the hand Joe offered. He sat down on the bed with his back to Joe and began to undress.

"Didn’t know you had a thing for men in uniform". 

Joe chuckled softly. 

"After eight hundred years, you should know I do when it is you," Joe reached over and pulled Nicky down by the back of his waistband so he lay backwards over his lap. 

"Hmm, that will explain the permanent puppy dog eyes you had throughout the Second World War when I was in the medical corp. And that night just outside of Tripoli". 

Joe snorted gently and gave Nicky a playful slap on the arm. 

"That was a very serious reconnaissance mission, actually," Joe reached for his waistband. "Let me help with them". 

As Nicky lay over him, Joe unclasped the plastic fastening of the belt, undid the button and fly before pushing the thick cargo trousers over Nicky’s hips. Nicky sat up again and pulled them over his feet before flopping back over Joe’s lap. He stared up at the textured ceiling of the apartment, the lampshade they had fixed up together; the uneven paintwork where the walls met. 

"It’s been a long day". 

Joe squeezed Nicky’s leg gently. 

"I could tell something was up when you called me earlier, what happened? Alexei giving you trouble?". 

"No, no, it’s just been difficult today". 

Nicky turned his head sideways to look at Joe who’s eyes crinkled at the corners with concern. 

"Tell me about it, _habibi_ ", he said, signaling Nicky to move beside him in the bed. "I’m listening". 

So Nicky did. 

*** 

Nicky and Alexei had got the call at around two-thirty in the afternoon. They had just finished a call from an old man whose wife had slipped down the stairs in their apartment and had a suspected fractured neck of femur. Stablisation, analgesia, hospital transfer. An easy job. 

Alexei sat in the driver’s seat of the ambulance, eating a burger out of a paper carton. Nicky sat next to him, eating a portion of fries. The fries were soggy and a bit too salty, but dipped in barbeque sauce they satisfied the hungry ache in his stomach. Nicky half listened to Alexei’s animated explanation about the best cannula sites for a patient with major blood loss when he was interrupted by the dispatcher on the radio. 

"Alexei; Nicolas - got a call in for a male, late 30s, acute shortness of breath". The dispatcher gave the address over the radio. 

"Yeah sure, thanks Helen", Alexei replied. "We’ll be on our way". 

Alexei put the ambulance into reverse, turned the blue lights on and they both headed for the address. 

Nicky knew the area. There was a bar nearby where he and Joe had gone a few times. A cafe where they had both stamped and printed posters and leaflets. A bathhouse where they had both spent a few evenings. A bookshop where a young man in wire-rimmed glasses had sold Joe a book of poems. Later that evening, Joe had lay naked on their bed as sweat dried on his body. His skin shone in the light from the table lamp and Nicky was astounded all over again by his beauty. Joe folded the book out onto the rumpled sheets and worked his mouth around the cadences of the verse: 

_It was not sex, but I could feel  
The whole strength of your body set,  
Or braced, to mine,  
And locking me to you  
As if we were still twenty-two  
When our grand passion had not yet  
Become familial._

Nicky lay next to Joe, cheeks flushed and his head sleepy and fuzzy from sex. He traced a hand over the curve of Joe’s hip bone as a deep ache of love and melancholy rooted itself in his chest. 

His thoughts were disturbed by the slow stopping of the vehicle. Alexei pulled the handbrake as they pulled up outside an apartment block. 

"Right, Nicolas, I want you to do the assessment and management for this patient". Alexei reached over to shoulder the bag of medical supplies. "I’ll be there if you need anything, but I want to see what you have learned". 

"Of course". 

Nicky picked up his bag and the cylinder of portable oxygen from the back of the ambulance. The front door of the building buzzed open before they could press the intercom. They both ascended the staircase, heading for the apartment on the second floor. The front door was already open and a man with greying dreadlocks stood in the opening. He wore a loose shirt and trousers and had slippers on his feet. The man beckoned them inside. 

"Thank you for coming so quickly. He’s in the bedroom. He’s had this before. He’s just really struggling this time", he spoke in a rapid cadence and there was a wobble in his voice. "I’m David, by the way". 

"It’s okay, we are here now, David", Nicky said, trying to reassure him. "What’s his name?" 

"Brock", David said it softly. "He’s from Arizona, a real southern boy". His voice trailed off in a small nervous laugh, as if he had regretted saying. 

They entered the small apartment, books and papers were stacked up in the hallway. On top of them, sat an open box of disposable gloves and a paper bag labelled "Pharmacy". Two coats hung above on hooks. One was a larger size, thick for the winter weather; the other, smaller, a thin jacket for summer months. From the way it hung, it didn’t look like it had been worn recently. 

David led them through to the bedroom. It was small, almost filled with a double bed and groaning bookcases across the back wall. The curtains were drawn and the room lit by a small table lamp. In the bed, propped up by three pillows, lay a small thin man. The sharp outlines of his body were covered by a chequered comforter, his knees made small mounds which turned slightly in on each other. His eyes were closed and Nicky could see his chest rising and falling rapidly. His breath entered his lungs in a crackle and exited in a wet sounding wheeze. 

"Hi Brock, my name is Nicky, we’ll get you sorted okay?". 

The man in the bed opened one eye and smiled weakly before groaning and wheezing again. 

"Got somewhere where I can wash my hands?", Nicky asked David. 

"Yeah, sure, follow me". 

As he led him out of the room, David said quietly: "He’s positive by the way, just to let you two know". 

Nicky looked behind him to see Alexei put on one pair of gloves, and then another on top of them. 

"Okay", Nicky replied. The word hung in the air, without judgement. 

David led him to the bathroom and Nicky washed his hands in the small sink. There was a plastic washbowl sitting on the tiled floor of the shower, a flannel folded up neatly inside of it. A small mound of what looked like soiled clothes in another bucket next to it, steeping in water and floral smelling detergent. Bottles of pills on the washstand. A plastic urinal bottle sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Nicky felt David’s eyes on his back. As Nicky turned around to leave, he placed a hand gently on David’s arm and said: 

"I’m so sorry". 

David’s breath hitched in his throat as he tried to stifle a sob. 

Their eyes met in a way that said wordlessly, _I see you. I am part of your family_. Nicky saw David’s shoulders relax and the tears fell from his eyes. He sniffed and wiped them away. 

"Thank you". 

They both went back to the small bedroom. David hovered in the doorway as Nicky conducted his assessment. Nicky felt Alexei watching him and took a deep breath. 

"How are you feeling, Brock?", he asked, not so much for the answer, but to assess his conscious level and airway. 

"Like pure fucking shit", he gasped back. Brock's lips were dry and cracked, his voice hoarse with the effort of breathing. 

"Seems like it. We’ll get you feeling a bit better". 

"Your accent?", he replied weakly. "French?" 

"Italian, actually," Nicky replied. "But I have lived all over. One of my best friends is French, though". 

Brock smiled weakly, and gave Nicky a little wink. 

"A hunky Italian EMT and y’all say being ill is all shit". 

Nicky laughed and took out the saturation probe to place it on Brock’s finger. Then, he counted his respiratory rate: twenty-seven. Too high. Looked at the reading on the probe: ninety. Too low. Nicky reached into the medical bag, brought out an oxygen mask, and asked if it was okay to place it over Brock’s face. He connected it to the cylinder and turned it on with a hiss. He placed his two fingers on his radial pulse and counted softly. One hundred and twenty, also too high. 

Nicky then gently undid the buttons of Brock’s shirt and placed his stethoscope to the front of his chest. Brock inhaled sharply at the cold sensation which turned quickly into a cough. David rushed to his side and rubbed Brock’s back gently as it passed. As he moved his stethoscope around to his back, Nicky saw the tell-tale purplish-red blotches indicative of Kaposi’s sarcoma under his arms and across his chest. There were deep crackles in his lungs as Brock breathed in and out. Not good. 

Next Nicky took his blood pressure, and Brock winced as the cuff tightened around his thin arm. David’s hand ghosted over his other hand and he whispered something inaudible to him. Eighty-one over fifty-four. Too low. Nicky took his temperature: thirty-nine point eight. Too high. 

He turned to Alexei, wide eyed, and at an impasse to what to do. 

"Do I put fluids up or not?" 

Alexei looked up at him over the rims of his glasses from where he was watching and making notes in a small book.

"What do you think, Nicolas?" 

Nicky looked at the notes he had made on the chart again. 

"We’ve got a drop in BP and he’s tachycardic, so yes". 

"You’re right, Nicolas". 

_Okay_. Nicky breathed in deeply through his nose. He knew what he was doing. 

"Okay Brock, we are going to get some fluids in you and hopefully get you feeling a bit better". 

He nodded back weakly in affirmation. 

Nicky gelled his hands and found the cannulation pack in the supply bag. He tied a tourniquet around Brock’s arm, and he winced again at the pressure. The access was bad, his veins small from sickness and dehydration. Nicky palpated the vein in Brock’s antecubital fossa. That would probably work. He released the tourniquet and prepared the equipment, opening the sterile field which contained it. He tightened the tourniquet again and inserted the cannula into the vein, withdrawing the needle at the second flashback of blood, before disposing of the needle in a sharps bin. Nicky then attached a syringe to the port, aspirated the cannula, saw blood, and then flushed it with saline. Then he hung the bag of fluid and turned the wheel to set it to the right drop rate. Clear saline ran from the bag, along the tube and into Brock’s vein. 

Brock mumbled something inaudible.

"He doesn’t want to go to hospital," David said, once Nicky had finished. "He wants to stay here". 

Nicky ran through his observations again: with the oxygen his saturation had increased, his blood pressure was slowly rising, his heart rate dropping. All good signs. 

"He shouldn’t need to", Alexei pitched in. "He’ll probably need some antibiotics but we can get those prescribed from your doctor". 

"We ... I have a doctor who can review him at home later today. It’s where he needs to be". 

"Okay," Alexei said, "I’ll put a nebuliser up now to help with his breathing". 

Brock whispered something to David again. 

"I’ll go get him some water", David said. "Nicolas, do you want to wash your hands again?" 

Nicky followed him out of the room and into the small kitchen which was joined onto the living room. Mutlicoloured pots and pans lined open shelves and orange and blue mugs hung from hooks under them. More pharmacy bags sat on the kitchen counter next to a dosset box meticulously ordered by day and time. Next to that, a fruit bowl filled with apples and oranges and a paper bag from the Greek bakery where Joe had bought baklava from last week. 

Pamphlets and polaroids were stuck to the fridge with magnets, tiny snapshots of a rich life. Nicky recognised David, younger with an afro rather than dreadlocks, and Brock, tall, muscled with a shock of wild blond hair. There were also photos of another man with David, shorter and smiling with tight curls like Yusuf. Beneath one of those polaroids was written ‘January 1985’. 

David filled a small glass of water at the sink and then put a small plastic straw into it. He turned to see Nicky looking at the photos pinned on the fridge. 

"Me and Brock," he said sadly, pointing to one of the pictures. 

"How long have you two been together?", Nicky asked. 

"Five years - seems like nothing really, it’s gone by so fast. Brock was there for me", he pointed to the other picture on the fridge. "After Hamid died, I was a mess. I didn’t eat or sleep properly for weeks, Brock starting making me mashed sweet potatoes with fucking toasted marshmallows on top; biscuits and gravy; prawn gumbo. Things went from there really. He’d also lost his previous man, so we connected that way". 

"I’m sorry to hear that, David. I really am". 

David shrugged, there was a quiet resignation in his body movements. 

"It is what it is, we got five great years. Some people get a lot less," He sighed deeply. "Things aren’t looking great for Brock, I know. But we do have a great doctor, he’s one of us. And great friends who can support us both. We are lucky that way. A lot of people don’t have that". 

Nicky knew that; he had been on calls to patients who had nobody, who he dropped off at the Emergency Department to an uncertain fate. It made him want to scream at the sheer unfairness of the world. Instead, Nicky smiled sadly and looked at the pictures pinned to the fridge; the jars of spices on the rack; the unwashed cups by the sink. In another life, David was standing in front of him, dressed in an EMT uniform, and Joe lay in their bed while slowly drowning on land. 

"It’s the small blessings, isn’t it?". 

David nodded in affirmation.

"You and your man, what’s his name?". 

"Yusuf, though he goes by Joe mostly nowadays. He’s doing an MA in Medieval Studies at Columbia at the moment, he’s writing his thesis on Islamic art. That’s why we are in New York". 

"And how long have you been together?". 

Nicky let out a long exhale, he never knew how to answer this question. So he followed their usual script. 

"Fifteen years," he replied. Then, with a small laugh: "it feels like centuries". 

David let out a whistle between his teeth 

"Damn, man, that’s a long time. You have a baby face, you look barely thirty!" David’s tone shifted, darkening slightly. "And you are both alright?". 

Nicky looked down at his boots, avoiding the gaze of the fading polaroids on the fridge. 

"For now we are, yes". 

David touched him lightly on the arm. 

"Be thankful for that Nicolas, I’ll be praying for the health of you both". 

"Thank you David. I’ll pray for you both as well". 

Nicky turned and started to wash his hands at the sink. David opened and shut one of the cupboards, bringing out a small packet of crackers. 

"I’ll see if he’ll eat something. Honestly, Nicolas, I can’t thank you enough for your help, some people won’t even touch him.” 

Nicky dried his hands and followed him out of the room. They went back to the bedroom and David sat down beside Brock. His eyes were closed, but his breathing was more measured. The nebuliser hissed and steamed like dry ice inside the mask. Once it had finished, Alexei changed the mask. David offered Brock small sips of water through the straw. His breathing was better, however, he looked shattered, and soon his head started to loll as he drifted into sleep. 

They packed up the supplies; made sure the documentation was filled in and checked that Brock and David were going to be okay. 

"You’ll let your doctor know what you need to do", Alexei said as they made to leave. 

David caught Nicky’s eye just before they left. 

"Thank you so much, Nicky." Then he said in a whisper. "Honestly, all the best to you and Yusuf". 

David watched them go down the staircase, out of the front door, and get back into the waiting ambulance. 

Nicky knew he should have felt good. He had made a difference, he helped somebody. However, he couldn’t shake the indisciprable feeling of dread which seized him. 

As they drove through the now darkening city streets; Nicky looked up at where the sun dipped in a syrupy circle between a break in the high rise buildings. He stared at it as the colours bled into the rain-soaked pavements in tiny fragments of fire. Nicky had seen humanity at its worst and humanity at its best. He had seen tragedy play out on both great and small stages. Even with all that, he turned his face towards the sky, staring at the roof of the ambulance. 

_God, if you are out there, I don’t know what you are playing at. But this, all of this is all, so, so unnecessary_. 

\----

They sat in silence for a few moments when Nicky finished telling the story. 

"I know we have lived through many plagues, Yusuf. It’s just this one feels very personal". 

Joe nodded sadly and pulled Nicky closer to him. Nicky tried not to imagine the stench of the plague hospitals he had tended in the fourteenth century, the smell of sweat and decay from the Spanish Flu in 1918, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis. Instead, Joe smelled fresh from his evening shower and sweet from the shea butter he rubbed into his dry elbows. 

"It’s easy to imagine ourselves in the same situation, isn’t it", Joe said sadly. 

"If this was another life, we probably would be. In some way or another". 

Joe sighed and ran his fingers through Nicky’s hair. 

"Damien, one of my students on the undergrad course I’m TAing came to my office today. You know him, the one I told you about who wants to write his dissertation on queerness in hagiography". 

"Yeah, I remember you mentioning him, what happened?". 

"His boyfriend is sick. He’s in the hospital now with some infection and it’s serious." Joe took in a sharp intake of breath. "Damien was sitting sobbing in my office today as the hospital wouldn’t let him go in to see him. You know I am very open about myself and us with my students who I suspect need a bit of community and support. He’s barely twenty-two, he’s just a baby, Nicky. He doesn’t deserve to go through all of this". 

Nicky clenched his jaw and looked down sadly. 

"And it’s HIV?". 

"Unfortunately, yes". 

He reached over and clasped Joe’s hand which lay on top of the blanket. 

"What can we do to help?", he asked, knowing deep down there was not much. 

"I called the hospital this afternoon and just got the usual response", Joe sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then ran a hand roughly over his curls. "I’ve put a couple of containers of the spaghetti I made in the freezer for him. Given him our landline number. From what I have gathered from talking to him, I don’t think his parents are supportive. He feels very alone, I think". 

"He’s not though". 

Joe smiled sadly. 

"For people like us, it’s very easy to feel alone. Especially now." 

Nicky thought back to his lovers as a young man in Genoa. Him on his knees in the shaded part of the cloisters, a blond man with his head thrown back in pleasure, grasping the hard stone wall behind him. What was his name after all this time? _Ah - Angelo_. At the time, there was no word, no sense of identity for how he felt. He looked at men and wanted them. He looked at women and didn’t want them. The sex was just an action, one which was unfavoured by God in the same way as sex before marriage, during Lent, or in certain positions. Now, they were in the alleyway behind the bakery, Nicky with his back against the wall this time, Angelo on his knees in the mud, looking up at him with wide eyes. So, he confessed to the priest and asked for forgiveness. The same night, Angelo fucked him over a table in the library. He confessed and asked for forgiveness again. He fucked Angelo in the orchard, pressing his beautiful face into the wet grass. Then, he confessed and asked for forgiveness again. 

He prayed for anything to fill to the ache of emptiness he felt inside. He went to invade a foreign land to kill and pillage to try and _fix_ something. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

Then he met Yusuf, and the world shifted. It took a while, but for the first time in his life, he lost that lonely feeling which lived at the back of his chest. After they fucked, instead of retreating to his own bed in a haze of shame; Nicolo lay next to Yusuf and traced the curves of his body, marvelling in the constellations of freckles dotted across his shoulders. With him, he felt grounded. He felt safe, and seen, and whole. 

In this time, the world reacted to their relationship with silence, some hatred, but mostly silence. At night they both dreamed of two women; riding horses; sharing a meal; sharing their bodies in ways Nicolo didn’t know was possible. Then, they finally met Andy and Quynh, who loved each other as passionately and fiercely as them. They all knew they were all different, all marked in some way by the way their bodies worked to heal and the way they used them to love. But they had each other. They had their family. Then Quynh was taken, and Andy fell apart. 

Then, slowly, over the centuries they had been witness to the birth of a sense of identity. It was something they had embraced, especially in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries when a community was starting to blossom out of pain and ashes. Between gunfights and battles; he and Joe had written letters, signed petitions; got people to places of safety. Now that same community was being torn apart from the inside out. 

"Seeing all of this is making me think about when we lost Quynh," Nicky said sadly. By now, both he and Joe were lying down on the bed, heads on the pillows, facing each other with their legs intertwined. Joe reached up and cupped Nicky’s face in his palm, he brushed his thumb softly across his cheekbone. 

"That was a horrible time, wasn’t it?". 

"Yeah, poor Andy". 

Nicky pulled Joe closer to him and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. His body was warm and safe and familiar, a liferaft in a stormy sea. 

The late sixteenth to early seventeenth century had been a time of change and displacement for their little family. The Reformation was sweeping Europe at a rapid pace, bringing with it religious and national turmoil. There had always been fear of the unknown, fear of those who stepped outside of society’s boundaries, but to their little family everything seemed to become more intense. 

So, Andy and Qyunh had ended up in England; saving women and girls caught up in the witch trials. Nicky and Joe had travelled around Europe, spending time in England, picking up odd jobs, studying, helping, and spending time together. 

Then Andy and Quynh had been caught. 

It had taken Joe and Nicky two years to find them. But by that time, Quynh had been taken, cast overboard in an iron maiden. Her fate still made Nicky’s breath catch somewhere in the back of the throat, his heart start to pound and the world begin to threaten to spin away from him. He dreamed for years of Joe’s lungs filling with water as he died and revived and died again. On those nights, Nicky would wake gasping, the sheets wet with cold sweat under him as he shivered and tried to regulate his breath. On others, Joe would mumble and tense in his sleep and then wake with a start and a strangled cry. After these nightmares, they held each other and whispered into each other’s collarbones, mouths and necks: _we are here, we are safe, we have got each other, we are not going to lose each other._

After slaughtering through the city guards to get to her, they found Andy in a small cell in a warehouse on the docks. The smell of filth and damp was overwhelming and Nicky remembered the acrid taste of bile rising in his mouth. A soft drip, drip of blood hit the floor somewhere. Nicky looked around, thinking it was dripping from his sword, until he saw the small puddles of blood below Andy’s chained hands. Her wrists were a mess, rubbed raw on the shackles, healed and broken down again and again. Joe unlocked the shackles with the key he had retrieved from the watchman. He held her wrists in his hands as the flesh slowly started to heal. 

"Where’s Quynh?", Nicky had asked frantically. "Where’s Quynh, Andromache?!". 

Andy looked up through her now long, matted hair. Nicky saw the pain and loss in her eyes and he knew. They both knew. Immediately, they both dropped to their knees and took her in their arms. Even though they knew they needed to go; they needed to run; they held onto Andy as she howled wildly. Nicky heard Joe sobbing next to him and realised by the strangled sounds escaping his mouth, he was weeping as well. 

That night, in a dingy room above a tavern in Deptford, red-eyed and exhausted, they had all tried to get some sleep. Nicky and Joe lay on one of the small bunks. Joe had one arm thrown over him, leaving more space than they usually did. It didn’t feel right to snuggle in close when Andy now lay alone. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, Nicky was awoken by a light touch on his shoulder. Andy stood next to the bunk, tears on her face, her hands clasped together. Nicky squeezed in closer to Joe, opened his arms and patted the bed gently. She folded herself in next to him and her back shook with little sobs. 

"It’s okay, Andy," he had whispered into her shoulder. "We’ll get her back, okay, we’ll get her back". 

Nicky had laid awake for the majority of the night holding Andy close to him. He thought about currents and trading routes; about sailors and drowning. Andy eventually fell into that deep sleep only intense emotional and physical exhaustion could bring. The warmth of Joe’s body pressed against him kept him grounded, kept his mind ticking over, and stopped him from descending into panic. 

They spent more than a century trying to find information about the ship Quynh had been taken on. The three of them had walked up and down the docks; up and down the beaches while the unforgiving ocean swelled in and out again and again mockingly. England became the stage for their very own tragedy. In Gravesend, Andy had held her labrys to the throat of a dock worker, so close it drew a thin line of blood, and hissed in his face. Joe had placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back as she swore and spat at him. 

Nicky had felt they were living in a dream world stripped of colour and light. Joe and him had argued properly for the first time in centuries. Nicky hadn’t been sharing his darkest thoughts with Joe and Joe was frantically trying to break through to him and get him to open up. He first tried to coax it out of Nicky then frustrated at his perpetual silence stormed out with raised words and the slam of a door. Nicky went out half an hour later to see Joe sitting on the dock throwing pebbles into the sea. He sat beside Joe and pulled his cloak over both their shoulders. _I'm sorry for not talking_ he had said, as he started out at the heaving grey expanse of ocean. _I'm sorry for shouting at you_ , Joe had replied, taking his hand in his. _I just don't know how we are all going to get through this_. Nicky squeezed his cold hand tighter, he didn't know either. Some nights back then, he couldn’t even be held by Joe as his head was filled with images of losing him. Andy usually slept close beside them, curled up on herself and looking small and fragile in sleep. Then in the morning they would all awake blearily and drag themselves to a new town; to try and find some new information; to come across the same dead ends. 

Eventually, exhausted and broken, Andy had called a stop to their search. Nicky and Joe had been heartbroken, but also breathed a guilty sigh of relief. Since then she had worn her grief like an old battered winter coat. There was a safety in the anger of it and, a safety in the way it kept her detached from the world. The deep ache of pain meant Quynh was never truly gone. 

Then they had met Sebastien, hollow-eyed and grief filled, and the two of them had bonded deeply over their respective losses. Sebastien awoke in the night gasping, coughing and retching as if his lungs were filling with water. Andy questioned him as he sat with a blanket around his knees, shaking from the images in his mind. Joe drew Sebastein’s dreams. But it didn’t lead them to Quynh. Andy and Sebastien both drank too much; smoked too much; killed too much. Nicky didn’t know what it was like to lose a partner permanently, but in seeing them - he never wanted to go through that. 

He felt those same fears starting to creep in now, like tiny tendrils of smoke at the edges of his vision. He held onto Joe tighter, and breathed his scent in deeply. He was in their apartment in New York, in 1993. Joe was there and he was safe. 

"Losing Quynh nearly destroyed our little family, didn’t it?", he mumbled into Joe’s chest. Then Nicky said in a small voice, opening up a tender part of his soul: "I’ve just seen so much death, I don’t want people to have to suffer any more". 

Joe rubbed his hand in small circles on Nicky’s back. 

"It didn’t, we got through it together. We always will do," Joe said. "People will always suffer, it’s how we react to that". 

He pressed a kiss to the top of Nicky’s head and reached over to turn off the light. "You need to sleep, _habibi_ , you have class in the morning". 

Nicky mumbled in affirmation. His eyes grew heavy in the darkness and he rolled onto his other side so Joe could snuggle into his back. And so, together, they slept. For a while, the world felt calm and safe. 

*** 

“It’s more difficult when it feels personal isn’t it?", Nicky said as he twirled some of the spaghetti Joe had made around his fork. On a small plastic chair opposite him sat Antonia, also tackling a much less appetising looking plate of stodgy hospital cafeteria pasta. The two of them had grown quite close over the past few months. She was from Minnesota, but had lived in New York since the late seventies. She was training to top up her LPN to RN and her course was the same length as Nicky’s. Out of all the other students, she was the only one who was also older, but also openly gay. They had bonded over that and had class and clinical training on similar days, so would usually meet up for lunch. 

Antonia sighed and brushed a hand across her closely cropped hair. 

"What you have to realise, honey is it is not personal", she spoke to him in the way a big sister would to her little brother. Even with all his years, it was something Nicky appreciated, being relatively new to the world he now walked in. "It’s something we, as a community, just have to manage. I must have gone to three or four funerals a week in the late eighties. I volunteered to work as an LPN on the AIDS wards, I saw how our community stepped up to help. Me and my friends were donating blood, organising protests, making food parcels. It’s in our collective actions which show we have the strength to beat this even if the whole world doesn’t want to help". 

"It’s in the small things isn’t it," Nicky replied. 

Antonia nodded. 

"It is, sometimes a friendly face, somebody who understands the patient’s lived experiences makes all the difference".

"I just can’t stop thinking about that poor couple I looked after yesterday". 

"It shows you care, Nicky," Antonia said, spearing some of her pasta and chewing slowly. When she swallowed, she said: "It’s not a bad thing, you just can’t let it eat you up inside". 

"I know, Toni, it’s just hard to detach yourself". 

Antonia pushed her plate away from her. 

"I think how I see it is, you are surviving, you and Yusuf are healthy. That is a radical act in itself. You are alive and you can help. That is a beautiful thing". 

Her words carried Nicky through the rest of the day. He was still thinking about their conversation when he returned home from class, Joe was still at the library after his own classes. After a quick shower and change of clothes, Nicky took their laundry down to the laundromat at the end of the street. He liked this job, it was rhythmic and boring and he could read a book while their clothes spun in the washers and dryer. He loaded their jumpers, shirts, trousers, socks, and underwear into the machine; added the detergent, and paid enough coins so it started to spin. 

Then he sat on one of the hard benches by the window and opened the poetry book Joe had bought at the bookstore. He flicked through to a random poem and started to read: 

_But death—Their deaths have left me less defined:  
It was their pulsing presence made me clear._

He flicked further through the book again and chose another poem to read:

_When near your death a friend  
Asked you what he could do,  
‘Remember me,’ you said.  
We will remember you._

Nicky just felt old, lost, and unsure about his place in the world. _Why did he and Joe keep living when so many others died. What was their purpose?_ He’d had over nine hundred years to wrestle with this concept. Usually, he reassured himself that it was so he could help people. But where did that leave him when not everybody could be saved? His eyes scanned down and Nicky let the words fill his mind with their soft cadence. 

_And you perceived that he  
Had to be comforted,  
You climbed in there beside him  
And hugged him plain in view,  
Though you were sick enough,  
And had your own fears too._

Nicky stared at the words, and slowly shut the book. He thought of gunfights and swordfights; disease and despair; pressing dressings to rapidly bleeding wounds and whispering empty reassurances. He thought of David sitting beside Brock in their little apartment. He thought of Booker on the anniversary of his sons’ deaths, blind drunk in their safehouse outside of Paris screaming curses into the night sky. He thought of Andy, with her head in her hands, on a dock in Plymouth, as the ocean which held her love splashed mockingly over her knees. He thought of Joe, eyes glazed over after death and clinging onto him until he breathed again. 

But he also thought of taking the hand of a stranger and reassuring them it was going to be okay. Of hot cooked meals and drinking with his family by firelight. He thought of the smile in David’s voice as he talked about Brock. Of making stupid bets with Andy in which he lost too much money in every currency. He thought of reading by torchlight with Booker and buying him books he thought he might enjoy. He thought of cooking for Joe; removing ink stains from his favourite shirts; and of being held by him at night. 

He watched the machine go around and around, the earth orbiting the sun, filled with their laundry.

***

Later that evening, Nicky and Joe sat cross-legged, opposite each other on their bed, and sorted the clean laundry. Joe paired their socks together and added them to a pile. On the radio, a popular music station played in the background. 

"Damien came back to my office today," Joe said, as he paired two of Nicky’s bed socks together. "He said one of the nurses had called him and said his boyfriend seems to be getting a bit better. He is hopeful he could be discharged by the end of the week." 

Nicky looked up from folding one of Joe’s t-shirts. 

"That’s good news". 

He started to fold a pair of Joe’s dress pants he wore when teaching. "I was thinking we should invite some people over for dinner. Damien and his boyfriend, my friend Toni and have a meal together. When did Andy and Booker say they were going to come across to America again?" 

Joe placed another pair of matched socks on the rapidly growing pile which caused it to sag and tumble to one side. 

"Two weeks time, I think. Andy said she needs to sort something out at some embassy", Joe laughed softly and Nicky smiled back at the mention of their little family. "She probably just fancies getting into a bar fight with Booker and then falling through our door drunk out of their minds at two am and getting blood all over our towels".

Nicky laughed and picked a bit of lint off one of Joe’s jumpers.

"Sounds like them," he looked up at Joe, who was starting to fold their underwear. "Shall we do it then, invite everybody round. We can make one of those dishes from that recipe book which takes all day to cook. We’ll get some wine, it will be nice". 

"Yeah sounds great," Joe looked up at Nicky and furrowed his brow as he held four odd socks up in his hands. "How come this always happens? You don’t get this when you wash your socks in a river, or even a good old fashioned bucket". 

"I’ll go back to the laundrette and complain, _habibi_. I’ll let them know you’ll be going down to the river with your bucket next time", Nicky replied with a gentle huff. 

He looked up to see Joe smiling at him with his soft, gentle smile that reached all the way up to crinkle the corners of his eyes. He felt a swell of feeling bloom at the back of his chest which propelled him forward so his hand was cupping the side of Joe’s face. Nicky kissed Joe gently and Joe returned the kiss, cupping his own hand at the back of Nicky’s neck. Joe pulled Nicky up onto his lap and deepened the kiss, running a hand gently through his hair. Nicky had kissed Joe probably tens of thousands of times in their long relationship but every time it felt like coming home. When they parted they kept their hands intertwined and pressed their foreheads together. Joe swayed their hands in tune to the music; Nicky didn’t know the song. 

"Dance with me?", Nicky asked. 

And they did. Joe lifted Nicky up off his lap and placed his feet on the floor. He looped his arms around Joe’s neck and Joe placed his hands on his hips. They slowly moved in time to the music, side stepping in the small space at the side of their bed covered in folded laundry. Nicky rested his forehead against Joe’s and felt his warmth against him. He disappeared into Joe’s touch, the soft brush of his lips on his cheek, his hands in his hair. The song didn’t matter. They were together. They were safe and alive and in their tiny flat in New York. 

For a night, the world didn’t feel so overwhelming. 

*** 

Two weeks later, their little rag-tag group of family and friends were all reunited again. Nicky had gone down to the market to buy fresh vegetables. Joe had gone to the halal butchers to buy lamb. The two of them had stood, hips touching, chopping huge white onions in their tiny kitchen. In the bottom of the tagine, Joe mixed together Ras el Hanout, ginger, turmeric, pepper, salt, honey and oil together for the lamb to marinade in. Nicky mixed together, flour, water, and olive oil to make the dough for flatbreads. He scraped the zest from lemons and mixed it with sumac to mix into the couscous Joe would prepare later. Joe had prepped the dried apricots, yellow raisins and prunes to add to the tagine later. 

By the time Andy and Booker arrived in the afternoon, their apartment was filled with the rich smells of spices and the sweet aroma of dried fruit cooking. They all greeted each other with warm embraces. The two of them were tired from the flight and flopped down onto the sofa. 

"Nice place," Andy said, picking up one of the books on the coffee table. "Very domestic, wouldn’t expect anything less from you two". 

"Got room for a roommate?" Booker asked, "I’m sick to death of what Andy calls ‘cooking". Andy kicked him playfully. 

"If you insult my cooking again, Book, you’ll be walking back to Bosnia". 

He held his hands up in mock defence. 

They fell back into their familiar roles, sharing stories and catching up on the few months they had been apart. Things had been hard for Andy and Booker, but they had been trying to do some good, get people to safety; deliver humanitarian aid. 

Antonia arrived about an hour later, carrying a bag from the local bodega filled with wine and beer. They all greeted each other with smiles and handshakes as two distinct parts of one extended family met. 

They all sat in the living room as Nicky took the dough out of the fridge and started to roll the flatbreads out on a board. From the living room, he could hear Andy talking animatedly about Sappho with Toni. Joe was also involved, talking about the verse and some academic controversy. Nicky rolled out another flatbread and thought to himself: _Andy, you were there, you little shit_. 

Damien and his boyfriend, Paul arrived a little later just before dinner. Nicky went downstairs to the door of the apartment block to help them both up the stairs. He took their bags as Paul rested his weight on a cane. As they ascended the stairs, Damien's hand ghosted over the small of Paul’s back, as if he was afraid he would fall. _They are so young_ , Nicky thought. He would have been falling apart at their age. 

They all greeted each other again, a mixture of hugs and handshakes and the small talk of getting to know each other. Luckily, they all got along with their mixture of shared and distinct life experiences. 

Then, the two parts of their little family sat and ate and laughed and joked around the too-small table. They passed warm dishes between them and served food onto each other's plates. There weren't enough chairs so Nicky sat on a plastic tub filled with books. Booker sat on step-stool and Joe on a fold-up camping chair Toni had brought over. They were all sitting at mismatched levels around the table, bumping knees underneath it. 

Antonia reassured Damien and Paul that she was always on the end of the phone if they needed any help with the hospital. Andy shared a story about her and a one night stand getting stuck on a balcony in Berlin. _Me and her were trapped there - and we only had a sheet! One sheet and it was a single!_ She had updated the story so it took place in the eighties - although Nicky knew it was actually from the twenties. Damien talked about his plans for his undergraduate thesis and Joe offered suggestions and encouragement. Paul talked about his family’s farm in Arkansas, about breeding horses and chickens with a mixture of sentimentality and loss.

As they finished their plates, Nicky looked at Joe, his head thrown back, slapping his knee at a dirty joke started by Antonia, but made worse by an interjection by Booker. Damien laughed politely at his teacher letting his hair down, and looked at Paul with love in his eyes. Andy even had a smile on her face. 

The food was warm; the company warmer. Nicky took Joe’s hand underneath the table. 

All together, they had the greatest blessing of all: 

_More life_. 

For everybody around the table, there was uncertainty, but for now they were going to make the best of that great blessing:

_More life..._

**Author's Note:**

> The football match Joe is listening to on the radio is an actual match which took place on the [14 February 1993](https://www.worldfootball.net/report/serie-a-1992-1993-juventus-genoa-cfc/). The previous match he mentions Genoa playing they lost 3:0 to AS Roma on the [ 7 Feburary 1993](https://www.worldfootball.net/report/serie-a-1992-1993-as-roma-genoa-cfc/). Due to timezones, they are either playing really late or Joe is listening to a repeat of the match. 
> 
> I didn't really go into much detail of the UNPROFOR's actions in Croatia in this fic, however, I think it is important when including historical events to provide some context. UNPROFOR was involved throughout the conflict in former Yugoslavia and their interventions were mostly seen as a failure, especially in Bosnia. The operations in Croatia in 1992 were seen as the closest to traditional peacekeeping operations and involved stabilisation to create an environment conducive to peace talks. You can read more about the UN's involvement here [here](https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/rp/1995-96/96rp15.pdf). Genocide, ethnic cleansing and horrific human rights abuses took place throughout these years which still have an impact on people and these countries today. If you do wish to find out more about this conflict you can find some survivor stories from [Surviving Srebrenica](https://www.srebrenica.org.uk/category/survivor-stories/). You can also find an [ article about the 20th anniversary of the start of the conflict](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/04/20-years-since-the-bosnian-war/100278/)
> 
> A lot of this fic was inspired by my research into gay and lesbian healthcare professionals and the support the wider LGBT community provided during the AIDS epidemic in the late 80s and early 90s. You can read about the experience of [gay physicians](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244019827717), the support of the lesbian community, and [a personal account from this time from the UK](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/aids-crisis-1980-eighties-remember-gay-man-hiv-positive-funerals-partners-disease-michael-penn-a7511671.html) if you want to find out more. HIV and AIDS is something that still affects our community and wider communities across the world today and you can read an [ article about a group of gay men from San Francisco who survived this time](https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/living-with-aids/story/). The last line of this article really sums up the feeling I was trying to explore in this fic: _In a life defined by a plague and measured in loss and pain, in fear and loneliness, sometimes it’s the smallest steps forward, the briefest moments of gratitude, that matter most. Waking up to the sunlight. Taking someone’s hand. Saying yes_. 
> 
> A lot of Nicky's feelings in this fic are inspired by my experience working and training in healthcare during our current pandemic. I am not a paramedic and not from the United States, so apologies if I have got anything wrong with my descriptions. 
> 
> All the poetry quotes are from Thom Gunn's beautiful collection _The Man With Night Sweats_. This was published in 1992 and covers Gunn's reactions to the AIDS crisis. The first quote is from [The Hug](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57038/the-hug) The second from [The Missing](https://www.faber.co.uk/blog/the-missing-thom-gunn/) and the third from [Memory Unsettled](https://agnionline.bu.edu/poetry/memory-unsettled)
> 
> The last line is a direct quote from the ending of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America. The first part of this play won the Tony Award at the end of 1993. I like to think Nicky and Joe went to see it. After all, they have got what Prior Walter wished for all along: more life. Perhaps, this sentiment is why so many LGBT people have connected with this couple and this film. 
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for reading and please do feel free to leave all comments and critiques on this work.


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